The United States and Saudi Arabia: Is Partnership Necessary?

Jamal Khashoggi’s death has called into question the
relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When a
Saudi critic and lawful permanent resident of the United States is murdered,
apparently at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Americans
will naturally wonder whether an ostensible U.S. ally really should be treated
as such. President Trump stands
by MBS—even as the
CIA believes the Crown Prince ordered Khashoggi’s death—but few
American policymakers likely believe him.

Even before Khashoggi’s death, though, Americans had reasons
to doubt the benefits of close ties to Saudi Arabia. With the Kingdom’s
disastrous intervention in Yemen, changes in the global oil market, and the
dark side of MBS’s modernization drives, U.S. policymakers have ample cause to
reconsider how beneficial an alignment with the Kingdom truly is. For both
moral and strategic reasons, Americans should begin to reevaluate U.S.-Saudi
relations.

For more than three years, a Saudi-led coalition has waged a
devastating war in Yemen to eject Iranian-supported Houthi forces from power. The
conflict has led to the deaths of over
17,000 civilians and displaced approximately two million more. In
April 2018, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described
the situation in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,”
noting that, “more than 22 million people–three-quarters of [Yemen’s] population–need
humanitarian aid and protection.” All the while, both Presidents Obama and
Trump approved
billions of dollars in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

But there is momentum in Congress to reevaluate the U.S.
role in Yemen. As early as March 2017, 55
Representatives wrote to President Trump to oppose “direct support
for the anti-Houthi coalition,” which he was then considering. In September
2018, after the U.S. State Department certified
that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were “undertaking demonstrable
actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) called
the statement “a farce.” A month later, in response to the death of
Khashoggi, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) argued the United States “really needs to
discontinue [its] arms sales to Saudi Arabia.” And on November 28, the Senate
voted 63 to 37 to advance a resolution to
sharply limit U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict, over the objections of
the Trump administration. These are encouraging steps.

Another rationale for close U.S.-Saudi relations is the
protection of Persian Gulf oil. In his 1980 State
of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter declared that if “any
outside force” (in practice the Soviet Union) attempted to dominate the Gulf
area, he would consider it “an assault on the vital interests of the United
States of America.” A decade later, when Iraq invaded
Kuwait–and observers worried it would attempt to seize Saudi oil
fields next–President George H.W. Bush sent
nearly 600,000 troops to the region to repel the invasion.

Events over the past decade, however, have fundamentally
shifted America’s role in the global oil sector. Thanks largely to hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the United
States has become the world’s
largest producer of crude oil. This makes it difficult to justify
the resources America devotes to protecting oil half a world away. In September
2018, Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) compared
six estimates by economic, scientific, and security experts of how
much the U.S. military spends protecting Gulf oil supplies. The estimates averaged
$81 billion in 2017. Even as approximately
one-third of all oil transported by sea flows through the Strait of Hormuz, an
America less dependent on Middle Eastern oil can afford to place the flow of
that oil lower on its list of priorities.

Finally, there is Mohammad bin Salman’s ruthless authoritarianism.
The Crown Prince has earned plaudits for his efforts to modernize the Kingdom,
from diversifying
the Saudi economy to lifting
the country’s ban on women driving cars. But even before allegedly
ordering Khashoggi’s death, there were signs that MBS was wielding power in a
heavy-handed manner. In November 2017, his government detained
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and attempted to force him to resign for
being, in the words of the New York Times, “not sufficiently obedient to his
Saudi patrons.” That same month, more than 200 Saudis, including princes,
government ministers, and businessmen, were
arrested on corruption charges, a move that to some observers seemed
more like MBS undermining possible rivals.
And since May 2018, at
least a dozen women’s rights activists, some of whom had campaigned
for the right to drive, have been arrested. In an October
16 column, the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman declared, “I
believe that the promise of M.B.S., however much you did or did not think he
could bring…reform, is finished.”

Arms sales to Saudi Arabia make the United States complicit
in a humanitarian catastrophe, with no gain for the United States. America’s
abundance of domestic oil means it can spend less protecting Gulf oil. And MBS’s
unnecessary brutality makes a mockery of his image as a reformer. For these
reasons, the United States must ask itself whether it truly needs to consider
Saudi Arabia a partner.

Charged Affairs is a publication of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, a non-partisan, non-profit organization. Views of the authors do not necessarily represent the views of the organization or the views of their employers. All rights reserved.